Hi,

very often I hear a question like: “OK Nenad, you are explaining how to make a good schedule, and how to assign Resources properly to Tasks!. But what about Task which are impossible to plan upfront, like, for example, Project Management Tasks?”

To be honest, Project Management Task is impossible to plan upfront? Why? To answer this question, let’s find out what Project Manager usually do in Project. He/she is preparing Project plan with the team. He/she will be at regular status meeting. He/she will prepare status reports. And so on. All of those actions can and should be planned in MS PROJECT as Tasks. BUI! Most important thing which describe Project Manager job is: SOLVING UNEXPECTED SITUATIONS / PROBLEMS. I am not going to describe what kind of unexpected situations / problems can arise in Project because of:

1. If you are Project Manager, you know exactly what am I talking about
2. If you are going to be Project manager, you will find out what am I talking about very soon

Because of things mentioned above it is impossible to make a proper Task like Project Management. Why? Because Project manager should work on this kind of Task when the problem will arise, and that can not be planned!

Let me show you a simple Project:

As you can see I put this Task in MS PROJECT 2016. This Task is Manually Scheduled, without Start Date, End Date and Duration, because I really do not know when it will be ended. Only thing I know that I know is that it should be done not latter than the whole Project is done, but since Project plan is never fixed this Project Finish Date will be changed in the future, so I didn’t put it in Project management Task.

OK! Now Let’s say that I worked on this Task 4 hours at Wednesday, April 2018. I will use Task Usage view and I will put this 8 hours like this:

this is just an example of how do I handle Project Management Task. Once again, This Task can not be predicted or planned because Project manager will work on it in unexpected situations and unexpected time!

Best regards!